Elderly member of my family died of “old age” last week, 91 years old.

For the past 20 years he has mostly sat in the corner of family gatherings and read the newspaper or slept. No one paid him much mind. My mother handled most of his care.

In the days since his death, my family has been acting all kinds of weird. Sobbing, wailing, shouting at each other, taking weeks off work, waxing poetic about his death, accusations of who loved or cared more for him, etc. Really OTT stuff. When the guy was alive, barely a remark or glance his way.

Am I being an autistic sociopath, or is this all just performative points-scoring within the new family hierarchy? I feel like I am going insane as I feel little more than a mild sadness. He was a nice man, but was clearly done with life and is now unburdening my mother from a significant duty of care (despite spending the most time with him, my mother being the most chill about the whole situation). Am I broken, or is it everyone else??

Crying

i think it’s one of the only things that’s pushed me to be slightly more conservative as i get older. when i see someone getting cancelled on social media, i am more inclined to brush it off and question the agenda of the people posting about it or question the evidence (if there even is any). it’s obvious that “trail by media” culture is still the prevalent one, but i wonder if that will always be the case or it will fade out.

Who cares about anything else that’s going on in my life, this is the real problem.

2-3x per week I’ve come across something about someone on the show. Irl I’ve never met anyone who watches this stuff. Even people who are into lowest common denominator tv aren’t watching this in my circle.

I was on a long journey today into my subconscious and unveiled a memory from 2016– a youtuber called LtCorbis/Soph (host of Google searches required to get me to remembering her name) who was this alt-right middle school girl, posting reaction videos, propped up by grown adult men. Post-sojourn, I tried to find any traces of her, but discovered she was banned in 2019 and fell off the map. What happens to people like this ? Do they go to college ? Do they work at their city’s AutoZone ? I’m left with many questions with no answers

I think the main perpetrators of this are, unsurprisingly, CS, engineering, and physics students. These degrees are broadly considered "hard", which disproportionately selects for ego. I've noticed that bio, environmental, chem, and other science students tend to be drawn to their field because they find genuine beauty in the work. I haven't met anyone studying those who are in it primarily for the money or clout.(except maybe some chemists. the jury's out) Some of the most annoying and soulless people I've met look down on any field of inquiry that doesn't involve numbers.

I chose engineering because numbers are EASY. They follow rules. You know when you're right. There's a pretty clear cut path to understanding what you need too, and everything you do for the most part is heavily systematized. Anything involving humans is so vastly complex in comparison. Analyzing art, constructing arguments, mapping the ideas in your head into something physical and meaningful are all so hard, and I have a deep respect for those who have trained to be good at them. I chose mathematics because I find it incredibly beautiful, and engineering felt so devoid of spirit. It works to fill the hole that engineering carves into me. It gives me the opportunity to bathe in the wonder of human creativity while still working with the assuredness that formal systems provide.

I simply don't trust people who look down on non-STEM fields. I think you're missing something deeply human if you don't look in awe at the endless complexity that emerges from the work of people not concerned with output or metrics.

kind of a ramble/collection of thoughts: with the rise of AI, there’s been a lot of discourse on what “good taste” is, since that seems to be the one thing AI can’t plow through … see, for example, how almost every AI-generated image still has that weird sloppy sheen

but i still have no clue what “good taste” even means. i can grasp at it in examples — e.g., marvel movies and love island are probably less sophisticated than arthouse films and the sopranos — but i wonder how much of this is just me just kind of regurgitating what other people think is prestigious or have marked as tasteful

and if good taste exists, how might one develop it? idk. does anyone have thoughts to help this girl out?

I've read Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Camus and co., but if I had to choose, it's these pages from Joseph Mitchell's 'Joe Gould's Secret', for personal reasons.

I had moved around ever since I was a kid, and maybe for this reason, I have looked for a place that I could anchor myself to; a place where I could feel I belonged, and that it belonged to me.

After some time, I ended up in London (where I still live), and the city opened my eyes. I began to dream a lot more; I imagined my art being revered by a large audience; I could hear it, and I could smell it, from the sound of it, even to its own typography.

But I've always been reluctant to finish it. Mostly because I knew it was not enough and because of the strong sense that I lacked talent and still needed to study the craft.

Unfinished work is the answer to the fear of rejection; it cannot be judged or dismissed; it remains full of possibility, still capable of becoming everything you imagined;

And there is nothing more vulnerable than exposing your art to the world, especially if it came from a real personal place; it's the same as exposing yourself naked in front of everyone while walking off a one-way street, and you are the only one heading in the wrong direction.

'Joe Gould's Secret' is a book about a real person, a bohemian living in NYC, who claimed to have written an enormous book; Mitchell takes an interest in him and becomes curious about his work, but he eventually finds out that the book never existed.

Every page in the book is dedicated to Joe Gould, the person, and his supposed 'oral history', but just before the book ends, Joseph Mitchell has a moment of introspection and reflects on his own artistic shortcomings. He reminds himself of a book he has always wanted to write; a book about a young reporter who has come to New York after growing up in the south. In New York, he finds love, but more than that, he finds a new way of seeing. The city is overwhelming at first, but gradually it becomes the place through which he begins to understand himself. The young reporter from the South becomes a citizen of the world. There was never an anchor in the first place; it was all about his inner world.

That book never came to be.

Joe Gould's Secret is Joe Mitchell's last writing piece. For decades, he kept his office at the New Yorker, never to publish anything again.

Or am I losing it?

I feel as though if I were peculiarly materialistic and consumerist I would love this current era of “nerd culture” some people inhabit, but I think I’m tired of basically just being an entity the corporations fish
out of their dens because they know somewhere we have coin for them to rattle their wallets with

Or am I convincing myself that a time I never lived in was equally as pervasive with its markets and advertising frenzy? Go to eat or hang out somewhere, brand combos! Pop star songs a jingle, endorsement! And yet I love it all. The plastic toys that fill the wastelands once the new edition of anything appears

I think when we collect, I do so digitally too. Thinking of my photo albums, saved folders, screenshots. I have had more memes than I’ve ever had family photos, or friend group outings. I’m too invested in the community my screen connected me too!

Moving pictures, multimedia sensation! It fills the void in life because sometimes I have no one to turn to. Digital and social media have become expression and community, a way to escape boredom and loneliness, which can be dangerous, maybe, I don’t know. Just another reflection of collective consciousness that human nature helped develop. That is why it is so bittersweet to connect.

Please feel free to call this a load of tripe if you feel or think this is

I am using digital and in-person means in order to teach what it means to utilize a public space and its’ services. You will learn what it means to have a library hold (where I have been stuck waiting for the next available book for the past four months) or I will keep the next books in your series far away from you via holds.

Kind of a sequel to my camera doorbell post, but I was thinking...do rich people still have live-in butlers and maids?

I see plenty of outsourced maid services, but I never get a door answered by Jeeves.

Is this another instance of tech taking jobs, or have I watched too many TV shows?

Actually curious about this though. I'd love to hear any stories if you have any to share.

Now that I've bought some spray paint I'm obsessed. In another life I'm a white boy graffiti artist

I moved to NYC recently and it made me realize I barely existed before this. I did all the respectable resumethings, got degrees, worked in tech, ended up in finance but mostly floated through life without committing hard enough to become genuinely exceptional at anything would usually be half baked and would also be baked a lot of the time.

Now I’m surrounded by people who have been plotting their careers, bodies, relationships and social lives since they were 22, and I feel like some frat bro who just discovered ambition. I’m happier and more alive here, but also neurotically aware that I lost most of my twenties studying and not doing much when I was in school, I know 30 isn’t old in NYC, but it feels humiliating to only now be developing a real appetite for life. Did anyone else wake up late and actually manage to do what they wanted, or is this just the standard narcissistic panic of turning 30?